SOUNDS AROUND TOWN: It's a night of Tetraptych jazz with Bert Seager

By Ed Symkus, Correspondent

Thursday

Jul 26, 2018 at 1:00 AM

Brighton pianist Bert Seager’s most recent album “Tetraptych,” which is also the name of his current quartet, covers a lot of musical ground, ranging from the varying moods of “Star Wise” to the laid-back ambiance of “Distances” and the free improvisations of “Equanimous Botch.” A peek into what got him to this point in his career hints that Seager, 63, is likely comfortable with all sorts of different music. There was classical training as a kid, followed by some time learning to play the blues (his best friend’s brother had a band that rehearsed in a basement while Seager surreptitiously played along on an upstairs piano). Growing up outside of New York City, he would regularly go into town to check out the Schaefer Music Festival, where he saw Miles Davis play, as well as The Top of the Gate to see pianist Bill Evans.

But when Tetraptych – Seager on piano, Hery Paz on tenor sax, Max Ridley on bass, and Dor Herskovits on drums – returns to the Lilypad on Aug. 1, it’ll be for a night of jazz.

“Here’s how this particular band works,” said Seager from his home in Brighton. “We have four to six tunes that we decide will be the repertoire for that night. They’re tunes that we know by memory – there’s almost always some Monk – but the music has to move; we can’t be too familiar and play just what we know. We’re each trying to respond to what we hear and keep the storyline moving. And there’s just so much love and respect and joy in this band.”

It’s the quartet format that Seager is happiest with these days. Though he’s done plenty of music-making as part of trios and quintets.

“The energy of the quintet was great,” he said, referring to his early days as a leader, and the makeup of his 1987 debut album “Time to Burn.” “But when we went on tour, I realized that I couldn’t play with the amount of energy that the drums and horns were putting out. When it came time for me to play, I wasn’t mature enough to know how to get the band to come to me, and I tried to match them at their energy level. It was frustrating because I was playing so hard and so loud, and there was no subtlety. One night the drummer was playing so hard, he cracked a cymbal! I thought, ‘OK, there’s other things I need to address,’ and I switched to playing trio. But now it’s quartet, and with a quartet, there are more colors, and there’s more polyphony and textures.”

Though Seager was playing music from an early age, there wasn’t a great deal of thought about doing it as a career. At Haverford College, he was a double major in economics and music, and the music parts of it – writing choral preludes or fugues – came so easy to him, he considered it “something to pass the time.” The post-college plan was to head to the West Coast, “get music out of my system, then go to grad school and eventually do public policy for tax law, or something like that, to make the system fair. I gave myself two years to get music out of my system.”

But six months later, living in San Diego, Seager found that between playing jazz gigs, he was practicing eight hours a day.

“I realized that meant something,” he said. “All my life I did well in school so that my parents wouldn’t scream at me. But here I was doing something on my own, more seriously than I’d ever done anything: transcribing music and practicing things in all keys, soaking it up and listening and breathing and talking music.”

Seager headed east after making a connection with a restaurant owner in Nantucket, sending him a tape, and landing a gig playing every night at The Boarding House. A subsequent meeting with another pianist led to enroll in the master’s degree program at New England Conservatory which, in turn, got him a gig in the Contemporary Improvisation Department, where one of his goals remains teaching his students how to practice.

“I’m teaching people how to figure out what topics they’re concentrating on, whether it’s technique, ear training, rhythmic training, or a certain kind of exercise,” he said. “I’m teaching people how to motivate themselves, how to recognize what they’re self-talk is, how to see what they’re saying to themselves when they come up against a challenge.”

And he’s really looking forward to the Lilypad show, because of the venue and the audience.

“I’d done 25 years at the Four Seasons Hotel, and I know what that’s like,” he said. “I didn’t want to play any more gigs where people aren’t listening. I’ve played at the Lilypad with different bands. They have a piano that’s in very good shape, and the people who come there come to listen.”

Smashing Pumpkins do the arena rock thing at the TD Garden in Boston. (7 p.m.)

Hawaiian swing band Kahulanui comes to City Winery in Boston. (8 p.m.)

Former head Talking Head David Byrne takes the stage for two nights at Blue Hills Bank Pavilion in Boston. (Also Aug. 1, both nights at 7:30 p.m.)

Aug. 1:

House of Waters – Max ZT on hammered dulcimer, Moto Fukushima on six-string bass, and Ignacio Rivas-Bixio on percussion – will mix together strands of rock, jazz, classical and world music at Café 939 in Boston. (8 p.m.)

Dobro phenomenon Jerry Douglas leads his bluegrass band Earls of Leicester at City Winery in Boston. (8 p.m.)

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